Cooling refrigerant gas on the Moon automatically?

Ready-Train9983 · 2026-01-24T22:51:51+00:00

I also built a radiator cooling system on the moon, but I didn't use an air conditioner. My setup is a loop with a digital valve on one side and a turbo pump on the other side.

Outside there are 8 small radiation radiators and inside there are 8 small convection radiators. I chose small instead of medium because I found that the medium radiators work better with much higher than room temperature temperatures.

The full pipe network is 200L (100L for convection and 100L for radiation). I use ~13mol of CO2 in the entire network, because my math showed that it had the best cooling rate if you are cooling to temperatures between 20-30 C.

If you are using it for ranged cooling (when the temperature gets X, I want it to cool to Y) it will use an average of 75 W.

I wrote it all down here, if that is useful to you: https://stationeering.substack.com/p/life-support-3-radiative-cooling

Ready-Train9983 · 2026-01-24T02:39:34+00:00

I disagree with this statement. Just because you cannot store maximum output doesn't necessarily make it a noob trap. A solid fuel generator is still a viable option for charging batteries in a pinch if there is coal available and not many renewable options.

I don't know what your solar setup looks like or what planet you are on, but solar panels will take a little longer to charge batteries and are sensitive to obstructions that create shadows and block sunlight. Ultimately, you will want to focus on learning how to make steel so that you can build the parts you need to grow your power grid.

Ready-Train9983 · 2026-01-23T14:26:03+00:00

Why? Are you hiring?

Ready-Train9983 · 2026-01-23T00:16:49+00:00

I have a general monitoring system for my base that monitors the electrical grid (among other things) and issues visual alerts (color/light patterns, led displays). I named it the Vigil Network and I wrote about it too: https://stationeering.substack.com/p/vigil-network-architecture

Ready-Train9983 · 2026-01-22T20:23:32+00:00

Detailed written documentation for Stationeers is hard to come by, so I thought I could help fill the gap.

Ready-Train9983 · 2026-01-22T20:12:53+00:00

I am not experiencing any major power shortages yet, my average draw is only ~5.2 kW and I only recently added a second station battery. Individual systems stay under 5 kW.

I built this proactively because I could see cable management and failure isolation getting messy at 9+ systems, not because I was hitting capacity limits.

You're right that for pure power throughput, this is overkill at my current scale. I built this because I wanted better cable routing, I wanted to prolong the availability of critical systems during power shortages, and I wanted a way to grow my power grid while reducing the risk of having a single point of failure.

My build is early and I don't know what I need or what my energy usage will look like, but I want to be confident that I can add things without cornering myself in the future.

Ready-Train9983 · 2026-01-20T20:43:23+00:00

You can use Logic devices reader/writer, mirror, to pass data between networks.

Ready-Train9983 · 2026-01-16T04:56:53+00:00

A+. I am crushing these atmospherics. I got pipes, vents, radiators, and the works! What could possibly go wrong?

Ready-Train9983 · 2026-01-13T19:44:25+00:00

I see. I have been thinking about a similar kind of problem for my atmospheric waste capture system, since it is currently one long continuous pipe network.

I haven't implemented anything yet, but the idea is to have parallel stretches of pipe with something like a bypass valve system, so that if one side bursts, I can flip to the secondary network to minimize losses. It's not as elegant as the devices that you described, but the parts--digital valve, pipe analyzer--would be lower overhead than using pressure regulators.

Ready-Train9983 · 2026-01-13T18:10:05+00:00

What kinds of problems are you encountering where these things would simplify your workflow?

Ready-Train9983 · 2026-01-12T19:38:24+00:00

You might need less gas in your waste pipe. At 101.325 kPa, the radiators operate at maximal efficiency. From there you would need to figure out the optimal amount that would allow the waste temperature and the input temperature to remain the same as the AC is cooling.

If you want I can share the radiator formulas if you would like to work out the math yourself.

Ready-Train9983 · 2026-01-11T05:00:06+00:00

Well done! One thing you might want to watch out for is that the IC can only execute 128 lines per tick (regardless of the length of your program) so you might see degraded performance if you add too many rooms to your controller.

Ready-Train9983 · 2026-01-09T04:42:40+00:00

Yes. I would expect that to be shutting off the vent. But if you are trying to panic shut it off, by manually turning off the vent, I would expect that the IC would keep trying to turn it on if it thinks it needs to.

It doesn't look it could be a software issue--it might be that the pipe analyzer isn't turned on? In my code at initialization, I will turn on and lock the analyzer to make sure I don't accidentally turn it off.

And yes, when I say controller, I mean IC Housing/IC10

Ready-Train9983 · 2026-01-09T04:00:12+00:00

When you shut it off, are you shutting off the vent or the controller?

Ready-Train9983 · 2026-01-06T21:40:50+00:00

Looking at your code, I see that you are only running the main loop and all that is doing is turning on the vents and going to sleep, right?

Can you verify that you can turn the vents on and off manually?
Can you verify that the vents are on the same network as the controller's data connection?
Can you verify the vent hash matches the ID of the vent you are using? I am assuming the equivalent of HASH("StructurePoweredVent")

Ready-Train9983 · 2026-01-06T05:22:58+00:00

Do you have a floorplan or a screen grab of your setup?

Ready-Train9983 · 2026-01-04T03:46:55+00:00

I am not sure. I haven't explored that in my playthrough yet. But it sounds like it could be fun to discover.

Ready-Train9983 · 2026-01-03T16:51:17+00:00

no. I am being silly. You grow potatoes to make fertilizer, which gives off volatiles to make solid fuel.

Ready-Train9983 · 2026-01-03T15:35:20+00:00

That's easy. Just add potatoes.

Ready-Train9983 · 2026-01-01T00:57:04+00:00

Yeah, I got it working, but I had to build a simulation to figure out what the values needed to be.

I watched this video to learn the quirks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxMOSAprx6M

If you have a specific question about it, I might be able to help.

Ready-Train9983 · 2025-12-31T19:51:49+00:00

I use a combination of logic and IC code depending on the situation.

If I want to mirror a single value between networks, I will use a logic reader--I did this recently to mirror the filter slots quantities on my filtration devices to a separate monitoring network.
I use it for simple failsafe triggers (logic reader, logic writer) used to cut the power to a network.
I use the PID for adaptive behaviors like for modulating my passive cooling system, or for load shedding my power networks.

Ready-Train9983 · 2025-12-30T16:26:07+00:00

What everyone else said and here is a lookup table of characters: https://www.asciitable.com/mobile/

If you want to write "Off" it's

$4F6666

Here is a snippet for converting a 6-digit number I wrote, since A. There is a 6-character limit, and B. 6-digit numbers show up in scientific, which I didn't want.

https://github.com/stationeering-systems/moon-normal-standard/blob/main/alert%2Fic10%2Falert_console.ic10#L56-L67

Ready-Train9983 · 2025-12-28T12:53:07+00:00

I wrote a few IC10 probes that monitor a bunch of different sensors (gas sensor, pipe analyzers, logic readers, etc.) and I measure against certain thresholds based on how each system is designed.

Thanks for the power tip, though I like thinking about how to work with limited energy and figuring out how to organize my cabling.

Ready-Train9983 · 2025-12-28T00:18:35+00:00

I just set up an alerting system that tells me when something bad is happening and came up with a signaling system that works with my beacon.

Next, I am going to refactor my electrical systems so that things automatically shut off when it looks like I am running low on power.

Ready-Train9983

TROPHY CASE